A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Patricia Q. Bidar
Red
These are days when every action carries a shadow idea: how much can anything matter with the breath of the minute hand nudging permanent midnight?
I learn that Pentecost is sometimes known as the birthday of the church. Pentecost Sunday marks the presence of the Holy Spirit with the earliest Christians as they gathered after Jesus’ death. Fifty days after Easter. (“He is risen!”)
My knowledge of these things is spotty. But I love Jesus as a friend. The Jesus Christ Superstar Jesus. Jesus of the gospels, bountiful hang time with misfits. That flowing Dan Fogelberg hair. That Jesus is just all right with me.
“Cleanliness is Next to Godliness” was curlicued on a little placard in my grandparents’ bathroom. Trying to make sense of it, I decided my grandmother had misspelled both “Kleenex” and “Garbage.”
OTOH, “I believe in the golden rule. Whoever has the gold makes the rules” was stenciled on a sign in our grandfather’s home bar. There was also an oil painting of a sexy woman toreador in only stiletto heels, brandishing a pair of red panties at a huffing bull. He told us our grandmother was the model. Another time, he said he himself was the model for the profile on the head of the American dime.
Behind the bar as our parents and grandparents played poker in the next room, my sister and I would loll, eating maraschino cherries and ruining bright paper drink parasols to inspect the tiny strips of Chinese newspaper inside.
So, no religious upbringing. And I learned today “we” mark Pentecost Sunday with the color red. See, on that first Pentecost Sunday, people were on fire with the Spirit, loving and praising God.
Red is the color of exposed skin, strange words issuing forth, the believers gleefully rowing, posing on precipices, or dancing badly under the trees. I see snakes dangling down, hissing out sales pitches to sunburnt ears.
And yet the signs of nature are here for us to see, and smell. Hear. The sunny wash of Matilija poppies. Trill of birdsong. Clouds drifting across powdery skies. The jacaranda’s canopy, nearly bare in the weeks before its heavenly blooms.
Patricia Q. Bidar is the author of the novelette Wild Plums (ELJ Editions, 2024) and the short story collection Pardon Me For Moonwalking (Unsolicited Press, forthcoming). Her short works have appeared in Waxwing, Wigleaf, Smokelong Quarterly, The Pinch, and Atticus Review, among other journals, as well as in several anthologies. A Los Angeles native, Bidar lives with her family and unusual dog outside of Oakland, CA.
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